


Echoes

by vatrixsta



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:21:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vatrixsta/pseuds/vatrixsta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were echoes in the night that wouldn't leave Logan, no matter how hard he tried to forget them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

\--

There were echoes in the night that wouldn't leave Logan, no matter how hard he tried to forget them. They haunted him, more pervasively than any ghost. There was the echo of his mother's voice and the flickering of a lighter to associate with her car, abandoned on the Coronado bridge. There was the sound of a belt being whipped through its loops, the loudest of hisses that sometimes followed him into his dreams. There was a car alarm, faintly sounding on and on, reminding him of death and his own failure as a friend and the worst thing that ever happened to Veronica.

Then there was another echo, one that haunted him differently than the others, its pitch altered by the idea that there might have been something he could have done to change an outcome he'd had no way of predicting. He'd been surfing, which wasn't unusual for June, but he'd been out alone, which was nearly unheard of. Logan was always part of a pack, traveling in numbers to assure safety and maximize the amount of trouble they could get into. But he'd been fighting with Lilly more lately, Duncan and Veronica were getting more involved with one another, and he hadn't felt up to the Dick and Beaver show, or worse, the Sean show, which should have been canceled in its first season, but had managed to stay on the air 16 turbulent years.

A lot of details were fuzzy, but Logan always remembered how wet he'd been, that his skin had still smelt like salt because he hadn't bothered to rinse off at the beach. His wet trunks made a sloppy trail on expensive marble floors as he moved through the entryway toward the kitchen. The house had felt wrong, and not just in the way it had always felt wrong to him. There was an oppressive weight to the air, like something terrible was about to happen, much the way it felt when Logan had done something extra special to tick his father off and they both knew what had to happen next.

But Aaron wasn't here, wouldn't be back for another day, at least. Logan was meant to be the master of his own domain for at least another twenty-four hours, and he'd been looking forward to the time alone with his first love, Mortal Combat.

Then he got to the kitchen. It looked like a small hurricane had swept through it. The only space still clean was one edge of the counter where a half-eaten bologna sandwich still sat. The sandwich was a bizarre sight in and of itself, given that he wasn't sure anyone in the history of the world had actually eaten bologna within the four walls of his house before. No one, except perhaps for...

"Mrs. Navarro?"

Silence was his only answer, and he tried to convince himself that he should be more disturbed by the wreck of the kitchen than the bologna sandwich.

"Donde esta, Mrs. Navarro?"

On his way back through the living room, Logan noticed a note on the end table. It was in Mrs. Navarro's handwriting.

_Mrs. Echolls,_

I'm sorry for leaving the mess. I will clean it tomorrow, there was an emergency. Ms. Kane came to see Logan, I let her stay upstairs to wait until he came back.

Logan took the stairs two at a time. He didn't know why he felt this way, heavy and sluggish, his heart beating faster than it did when he was being pounded by a wave. He didn't know, but he wasn't going to ignore the impetus he felt to move, move as fast as he could to get to...

"Lilly?"

She was pale and distant, like a doll, or a picture of a girl who wasn't real. Lilly was vibrant and present in every moment she'd ever lived, every moment Logan had ever witnessed, save this one. That was probably why it stayed with him. She was wearing one of Logan's shirts, bright orange and ugly as sin. Her long legs were bare, stretched out on the bed, and she was staring at something he couldn't see. He said her name again, and it was as if she came out of a trance. Luscious lips curved into a welcoming smile, and she flung her arms wide.

"Home at last, lover," she said, her voice booming in the quiet of his bedroom.

It would have been so easy to start a fight with her, to pick at all the doubts and insecurities he had swirling around in his head. Instead, he put it all aside and let her pull him down to the bed, let her peel the ocean away from his body and surround him in the smell of gardenias. It was the shower gel his mother had used since he was a baby; she used to let him smell it from the bottle, and he'd associated it with her all his life. Lilly must have taken a shower in his mother's bedroom, touched her things; it disturbed him in a way he couldn't fully comprehend. Lilly smelling like gardenias seemed wrong, every woman should have her own scent, and Lilly should have been orchids, expensive and untouchable, or maybe a rose, blood red and beautiful, with thorns that'd put an eye out if you weren't careful. He couldn't remember for sure now what she'd smelled like before or after that day, so she was gardenias by default. She would have hated it, and the thought made him smile a little.

Sex with Lilly had always been one of the better parts of their relationship, but that day it had been... different. It felt like goodbye, and sometimes he wished he'd let it be, that they'd let it be, with the beauty in their relationship surely gone, but not forgotten. When he hit upon those rare moments in the day when he didn't hate himself, didn't blame himself, Logan remembered that as the last time he and Lilly were ever really the way they were supposed to be, the way he wanted them to be. They were skin to skin, and Lilly was smiling like the fucking Mona Lisa, her hand stroking his shoulders while they shared the same breath between them.

In the way the heart measures memory, that was the last time Logan ever saw Lilly Kane.

~

Later, after most of the wounds Lilly had left started to scab over, after he'd spent a day painting and staring at a little red heart colored over a brown arm, after he'd become the son of the famous actress who'd thrown herself off a bridge, Logan noticed Weevil eating lunch one day at school.

"Ah, the decorative brown paper bag. It's people like you that really put this school on the map, Weeves."

"You know, you've had a hard week, so I'm gonna let that slide."

"Charity from the ghetto. Somebody text Alanis, it's time she learned the true meaning of irony."

Weevil stared at him, hard. Logan thought he probably should have been scared by the look, but he hadn't been, because he'd had a long-held suspicion confirmed, it was still circumstantial evidence, but he knew, really knew, at last, and it really was better to know.

"Keep walking," Weevil advised. "My grandmother made me this lunch, and I'd rather you not ruin it."

Logan left him be. No use getting upset over another half-eaten bologna sandwich. No use wondering just how often Weevil used to smell like gardenias, too.

A week later, he'd kissed Veronica for the first time, and it surprised him to realize it had been exactly the way they were supposed to be; the way he wanted them to be.

~

"Sorry I'm late. I know I said it'd only be an hour, but it was so worth it. I, your incredibly adorable and resourceful girlfriend, have just managed to pay for my third year at college in the span of three days."

Veronica's delighted rambling was like white noise to Logan. Instead, he concentrated on the sounds that comforted him most. Her shoes thudding off against the wood floor in his living room, the swish of fabric as she started shedding clothes on her way to the kitchen. Her keys hitting their spot on the end table, the drone of the answering machine as she checked his messages, all of it signified that she belonged there, and that maybe, if she belonged there, so did he.

"Dad's still incommunicado." He started listening when her tone changed, when it became melancholy. "I hope he makes it back in time for my birthday." A forced brightness entered her voice. "He'll be sorry to miss such a spectacle."

A smile tugged at Logan's mouth and he rose up from the bed, padded down the hall, and leaned against the wall for a moment, watching. Veronica had kicked her boots and jeans off at the door and was unbuttoning her shirt with one hand while she flipped through his mail with the other. He couldn't stay in the shadows forever, though, and soon he was behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist, his hand slipping beneath her shirt where it parted over her belly so he could stroke her skin. Her shirt was damp, and he realized it must have been raining outside.

"Mmm," she murmured, leaning her head back against his shoulder.

He took the hint and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. "How many times do I have to tell you?" he mumbled. "There's no spectacle. You wanted a quiet twenty-first, and you're getting one."

"I refuse to believe Logan Echolls is giving up the chance to coerce me into legal rabble rousing," she said. "It may not be a spectacle, because I know how you hate to cause a scene, but I don't think I'd be remiss to predict a piñata and some flavor of Jell-O shot."

"Jell-O shots are so 2002."

She spun around in his embrace, voice bouncing. "So there will be a piñata!"

Logan could do nothing but laugh, and she seemed pleased with his response as she slid onto the tips of her toes to press their mouths together. She shivered from the cool air in the house.

"You're cold," he said, running his hands up and down her back. "And here I thought you were stripping to turn me on," he murmured against her mouth.

"Please," she said. "If I want your body, I'll snap my fingers." Her hands running through his hair, the way her legs shook just a bit, took any bravado from her words.

"I'll close the doors," he offered.

"No," she said, going to work on the button fly of his jeans. "You like them open. It makes you happy to hear the water. And I like it when you're happy." Her nose crinkled. "You're so much easier to deal with that way."

"I'll have to find some other way to warm you up then," he said.

"You're nothing if not creative." She'd already started backing towards the bedroom.

The rest of her clothes fell away easily as they went, and after he'd spread her out over his bed he paid careful attention to every part of her. He inhaled deeply at his favorite spots and smiled as he lost all the old fears in her skin.

Veronica was fresh rain and fabric softener (and a hint of marshmallows and promises). The big balcony doors were wide open, the rain and the ocean covering them as they covered each other. Veronica's laugh was an echo of them in the night.

\--end--

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first challenge at vmlyricfic. My elements were a half-eaten bologna sandwich and "beauty surely gone" from Now Comes the Night by Rob Thomas.


End file.
